Re: Half of all Chinese people can't speak Mandarin!


<ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1117277049.200627.269790@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/05/23/2003256286
> The National Language Commission's survey also found that many of the
> 53 percent of China's 1.3 billion people who can speak Mandarin are not
> frequent Mandarin users.
>

Just taking your statement at face value, 47 percent of speakers must,
therefore, be frequent speakers of Mandarin.

My wife is a mainland Chinese, therefore one of those in the statistics you
have. We speak a non-Mandarin Chinese dialect at home, but we watch Mandarin
DVDs at home. In our daily lives, even though she can speak it, she doesn't
often use it.

Being someone who "can" speak a language and not using it frequently does
not suggest what you put in the subject, i.e. "Half of all Chinese people
can't speak Mandarin!". It is probable that the majority of people who do
not speak Mandarin frequently even though they can, are like me.

Dyl.


.

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